Salman Rushdie and Friends in Conversation: The Only Subject is Love

this program is brought to you by Emory University I have a confession to make until I came to Salman's archive which I started looking at at some point last year I hadn't realized that I'd been looking for love in all the wrong places love was everywhere in his archive Ben Jonson told you in setting up the topic for this symposium that we had found the words for the topic in his essay February 1999 written ten years after the fatwa in which he says love fields more and more like the only subject but as I said yesterday in my remarks as we were looking at the opening of Salomon's archive love seems to be everywhere in this writing from the very beginning and it's all over the archive their journal notes about looking for love looking to be loved to be lovable about writing from love writing as an act of love reflection on characters who'd been redeemed by love and forgiveness love of children love of his own children and all kinds of love not just a couple love it was the love of people for their rulers for their Prince the prospect of love in the future a future with or without love and then I found this one page it was a fragment which had a series of fascinating collocations I want to read you from this here he says and this just seemed to be random notes that Salman staking they appeared in an unfiled box of material actually don't remember where it's from and there was this page which ends by saying the opposite of hatred is love the opposite of tyranny is love the opposite of censorship is love the opposite of evil is love the opposite of politics is love the opposite of war is love the opposite of God is love would you sing a little more to explain this forgotten writing it so god knows what I was talking about but first I just well I just like to say first of all you know I thought it's been such fun listening to them to my two pals and thank them for showing out but that's an act of love that they showed up for me and I thought you'd quote oh well it was double + good all these notes I can have an argument but one of the things I thought actually yet but we're deep I was talking about being consoled by the fact that I was having a hard time while she was having a hard time it reminded me a long time ago in the British satirical review could be on the fringe there was a I think Peter Cook impersonated the then British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan explaining conservative social policy in a way that would be understandable to many Republicans I think he said is the policy since he said we think about conservatives as we believed there's always someone worse off to yourself and it is the policy of the conservative party to make sure that the state of affairs is maintained also I wanted to say Christopher did mention but one of the things I feel proud of is having helped come up with the title for his forthcoming memoir can we talk about us you've been Gabe yeah like the thing about this game is it's like a computer virus so when I tell you this game you will all fall silent and stop listening because you'll be tried because you'll be trying to play it and the game is the titles of books and movies and works of art that don't quite make it as for example mister shabazz very good for whom the bell rings farewell to weapons and portrait of a woman miss Bovary and the one that you see Joseph Heller inspired which I've I can't remove which of us suggested but age 22 which is the title of his memo it's not such a severe also I'm two days in the life of evander news and if you take one letter off a famous book by Kurt Vonnegut you get laughter as five so anyway Mike this would be the time no we could go there's a strat 14 element to another game of the games can I just say one thing about irony since he was talking about irony I remember once being in a conversation with one of the other people there was a filmmaker BIM vendors and he had recently married an extremely devout wife and them tends to take his worldview from women he's with and so with them had suddenly become very devout and he was speaking about how artists should now dispense with irony that irony was in fact dangerous because people would misunderstand it and that we must all learn to speak much more directly and clearly it without such you know trickery as the ironic intrigued lexicon and ice I said to excuse me mister vendors could I just check that you are in fact the vim vendors who directed wings of desire and he confirmed that he was I said well if I remember that that film there are there are angels on the architecture looking down upon earth and the lives of human beings and wishing that they could have those lives that are you suggesting to me that we should understand this film non ironically and he said yes so I said in fact there are angels on the architecture is that right and they are wishing that they were human beings and he said he felt that that was so and this so upset me but later on when I was writing a novel ground beneath her feet I put them and his wife into the novel under the he was he has the name in the novel Otto Vinc misspelled cost W ing and he and his wife are known collectively as the things of desires and it's it's a great law that when you make something absolutely clear nobody notices it so then has never never to this day noticed but he is in fact a character in the book even though you would think anyway that's sort of about love everything's about that's my desire anyway sorry your questions I wasn't like I was going to ask you this question at the about the 20 minute a lot of point you know how every conversation goes into a bit of along the 20 minutes but you've led me to desire before my time okay I'll ask you this an item that didn't make it to the exhibit but which was one of my favorites and this has to do with sex so stay tuned Salman was actually nominated for the her piece of writing for the bad sex Awards it's a badge of honor and your response to the nominators as it's a thing of beauty it's funny and he regrets his inability to attend the occasion and he hopes that the judgeship committee has had plenty of experience of bad sex which would lead them to to be experts and to be guided to a wise decision would you tell us about the relationship between well love and sex oh well it's close may not be actually true to say that you can't have one without the other but it helps the thing about the bad sex award is that it's it seems to be a particularly English disease but I suspect it's actually an award in which all you have to do is write about sex at all and you immediately dominated for the bad section or it's a reward given my people who would prefer not to think about sex it reminds me there's a wonderful moment in a play by the British playwright Alan Ayckbourn in which it's called bedroom farce in which one of the characters woman is complaining to her mother-in-law that she and her husband are not getting on and and the mother-in-law who was fond of her says what's that what's the trouble dear is it is it se X and she says yes it is and modern or giveth and wonderfully wise advice she says well as my mother always said to me dear every time se X rears its ugly head you should close your eyes before you see the rest of it I always feel that the judges of the bad section wouldn't like her anyway I didn't win if my sex wasn't bad enough and rightly as it added close your eyes and think of England there's something about the climate yeah no sex please refresh Griffing the remains of their teeth on the grim business of passing on their genes but I can't remember who said if the Christopher will tell you that but you know the French have love affairs and the English have hot water bottles but this was some yeah actually write about writing seriously about saying truthfully I had been very in my early for a long time in my career I have written virtually nothing about saying you know that's I mean Midnight's Children there's there's obviously there's plenty of sex but it's all off stage you know there's very very little actual description well except there's a comic moment in which you know I'm in a scene I the the who becomes the mother of the main characters is just remarried you know her husband who is going to be the father and she is finding it very difficult to fall in love with him and so she decides to fall in love with a different bit everyday and to choose little some aspect of him to fall in love with on that particular day and one part thought that she was finding unable to fall in love that's more or less the only overt sexual try as she made she exactly and she does drunk she's a good wife so when I got to the Moors last side there abouts I mean even there there there's a there's a love scene in it but it's a very comic love seaman the way it's written about it is it's being narrated by somebody who can't tell you because you know that the scene is about the first person narrator is telling you about the moment his mother and father first made love and of course you know as we all know your parents aren't supposed to have sex you know except maybe on the one occasion that you were conceived otherwise and so he's trying to describe this as the narrator of the novel and the whole passage is about how he can't describe it because he keeps needing the verbs out you know so it's written kind of first he but it has it has a lot of I can say this ironically spice spice because it all takes place on episode yes he says first Henry with a hint of and then she and then then he again and she again and then very quickly and for a long time that one has to do it and slowly he just can't do it so so really there was no there was no sex in my books until this last one and what happened in the Enchantress of Florence is that I found myself describing a world sixteenth-century both in India and in Renaissance Italy which was very openly hedonistic in which there was a it was happening all over so unlike today and and so I thought I've got to actually take it off because it's such a central aspect of the world I'm describing so I yeah it's very hard to do because it actually the thing that's true about the bad sex thing is that it's very very easily too easy to do it badly and particularly if you strike if you start trying to be an old photograph you know if you start being at all kind of new brushes it gets cripplingly embarrassing at once so funny is one way that that that's that's quite effective comedy comic sex scenes I'm usually more successful than non comic ones because most sex is comic not always intentionally with a lot of writers want to write about sex very badly and they do that leads me to something that I know I want to ask all of you about and that's the connection between the couple love with which we relate the idea of sex usually and the bigger love the arrows and distinction that people make the love between the two and other bigger kinds of love well I think you know I actually think you know looking at this all these old papers has obliged me to do what I don't very often do which is to sort of look backwards at what I've done rather than forwards towards what I'd like to do and and one of the things I think is that the romantic love in my books doesn't get a very good deal but you know the path of romantic love doesn't run very smooth it tends to go wrong in all kinds of I hope interesting ways but the stuff that I think does is there and works better is almost every other kind of month you know the love of love of place the love of parents for children the love of well family you know the love of friends you know loyalties those kinds of things I think those things intend to I this is my hypothesis since yesterday so it's a working hypothesis and please feel free to disagree but I think that that's that's I think it's true that what happens in these stories is that is that the love that endures is it's something other than the romantic sexual love between men and women and that tends to spectacularly decompose well Christopher writes about it too that love suffers in retrospect is better in prospect something like that yes I think the idea the romantic idea is the one of when your thoughts as referred says turn to thoughts of love when you would like to be in love itself or in love with the idea of love elusive always promised me soared almost disappointing to be pinned or the next winding back at the only one spool here our come friend mutual friend Ian McEwan just after the terrible assault on American civil society in September 2001 and he P it was very difficult for fiction writers to come up with something no one had thought of opportunity pointed out before someone had not in a mismatched different ways the end did the following he looked at all the last messages that those who knew they were going to die those who didn't weren't just obliterated with those who understood that their death was coming at a few minutes usually with her cell phone what they said he went through all of them and you probably see what I'm going with he said they all ended with the same three words I think there were no exceptions to that fact and he said that that was probably the best revenge well before you too Deepa Mehta's made this wonderful film called the Republic of love based on Carol shields novel and one of the lines I remember from it well it's not a line so much as a sort of summary that you have to you need to love and you can only live and be fully alive if you can risk being disenchanted by the idea of love what I remember of the screenplay which which resounds with me is that what Carol said is there's a part of every band I thought that was rather lovely and and the whole aspect of it that you fall out of love and I think that's fascinating and romantic love cease to exist for me when I stopped reading Barbara Cartland you mean you've read of course I did and georgette hair and all the mills and boons in the world guilty as charged well certainly we get a we get our idea of love from Hallmark cards we get our idea from films and it seems to me that all three of you talk about love and all sorts of big ways Christopher you say that life is an incomplete unless love poverty and war have been experienced that can do just those three that in life is complete of love poverty and war it's incomplete without you haven't lived unless you've had probably hard experience of love for in war but to generate the experience yes you wouldn't know what you're writing about if you didn't but but one must be aware just as some people say poverty is enabling and war can be liberating and those things can be true generally so I think he one has to see what the dangers of love are I mean it used to impress me very much when I was little that I was being told that I had to love a nonentity an impersonal force capital or I might mind lowercase G as the name this was a compulsory love I find the idea of compulsory about rather creepy don't you so they're mostly love of someone who you're also bound to fear this is the germ of sadomasochism it's a present in all in all PJs tick cults and in the very sickly work of CS Lewis on the four loves as he describes them you have this awful groveling element which I don't think qualifies as love at all a lot of people don't like to say the words I love you because they're afraid that if they say them their exercise themselves if you do love someone there are other ways of proving it then announcing it or writing them a sonnet and on Valentine's Day whatever might be and I think that's that's a proper reticence it exemplifies some parts of the uncertainty principle don't jinx it by going on about it too much like sex you'll know it when you see it one of my one of the things that I've tried to look at more than one novel really interest yes but I think also is the idea that we may be wrong about the nature of love that you know when we when we talk about love we usually add to it all kinds of other related concepts such as fidelity durability you know that cetera that it's supposed to be would go on for a long time and it's supposed to be monogamous and etc etc and it occurred to me that that might all be nonsense that might just be a kind of comforting bourgeois you know de mess occasion of love and and that actually love might have more or less nothing to do with those things it might be much more savage and brutal and non enduring that a thing that betrays itself and etc it might actually be the kind of love that you find in high tragedy kind of love you fight you know where you you can't trust it it betrays itself and it betrays you and it doesn't last explodes in your face etc so I thought supposing you just to take away all these comforting half-truths about love and look instead at this much more much harsher tougher weaker thing you know which is related of course and maybe what I'm talking about so it's something much closer to passion that you love but but that anyway it seems to me it's worth at least considering the possibility that it might not be very nice love don't you think I'm sort of listening to you guys I think the thing but that's attractive about love is that somehow it's shared and you aren't there for alone hmm but you could love without being loved you know and it's a the only one unrequited love painful but still there is with somebody it's off somebody who might might not think you're very cool at all but do you think they are just reminded me this is slightly of a tangent but think people is talking about love made me think I don't know why about Don Juan and therefore dog journal and therefore Myra yes and and one of the I just shared this with you is a strange story a friend of mine was researching Byron and and was reading the correspondence at the time of the publication of Dom June written by the then British poet laureate Robert Southey the Byron despised and detested Saudi and often said what a crappy he was and Robert saw the returned the compliment no and thought that Byron was a piece of as well and went and when Don June came out there's a letter which my friend found and sent to me a copy of written by Sonny to some friend of his sort of a fulmination against this poet you know saying that it was evil and blasphemous and vile and disgusting and so was its author and and he that at the height of the tirade he says this poem is so evil that it should not be called doctorin it should be called The Satanic Verses this is something I didn't know at the time that I was writing but I thought I'll take it you know you know me and Byron I think that's just fine if that's that's that's the team I wouldn't mind being on yes this is just the question of re-emphasis you know instead of the famous what's this thing called love you just be emphasize it and it comes what's this thing called love which is less romantic like if you just take the word love out of any well-known phrase or sing and put in hysterical sex as in hysterical sex is all you need hysterical sex is a many-splendored thing my favorite the book is hysterical saying it could grow on YouTube all you need you'll be playing it later I know I know I know you will these these are all computer files but there's you were saying earlier then we try to bush was if I domesticate the idea of love attach it to the idea of fidelity durability and so on it occurs to me that I don't know that it's necessarily a bourgeois version it sounds to me like trying to make a religion hmm or supplanting religion with love with all the suggestions of transcendence well that would be an improvement everlasting it wouldn't be perfect but yeah I think if we could supplant religion with love I'd go for that I think it's very important that it be so to say contained in other words one on one at a time not trying to be funny I mean your daughter your wife perhaps your brother but totally did is errors no point in that direction intelligible in in proportion useful but when you're told you have to love your enemy I don't see the point that seems to be suicidal especially considering sort of enemies what actually has anyway I can't do it I'm glad I can't this my hate them and wish to encompass their destruction but worse still I think as they do me I returned the worth still I think even mortgage and sickly again is there you have to love your neighbor or everyone as much as you love yourself I think orrible injunction first because it's impossible even no one can do it it can't be achieved yet so that it's totalitarian because it is a commandment but it cannot be obeyed therefore you were always in the wrong you're always guilty you've always fallen short you should always be approaching yourself it's a very horrible suggestion and and it is you can't walk around thinking there goes another person I love just as my I'd like my good it's also it's it's absurd until you think about its further implications which are dictatorial and totalitarian and thoughtcrime creating so I think love should be reserved for people who know you well enough to either accept it from you or offer it to you in one of the great things about living in a city is the opposite of loving your neighbor you don't have to know your name yeah yeah but in fact it's preferable let me ask you love of the same and love of the different the theorist michael hart has been exploring the idea of love he won't write a book about it you'll talk about it in interviews because he says it's just something that he's trying to work through and he specifically looks at this biblical injunction to love thy neighbor and he says that's that's dangerous the idea of love of the same which can translate into racism right love of your own race your own people your own country can't can translate into that and the question that I have is if you examine 20th century history most of the modern genocides are between neighbors so maybe we need to look at developing better relationships with our neighbors and also amongst talked about this and the more slots I how is it that labor turns against neighbor well that's very very fine ninety-three positive because it is argued by some biblical scholars that neighbor in both old and new testaments only means fellow member of the tribe that is true you're not supposed to love non-jews in the same way for example that seems very clear in the ten kilometers but on the on the on the genocidal there is a theory of Sigmund Freud's which some of you sure know it's it's called the narcissism of a small difference so that differences between people that are practically impalpable to you and me such as the diversity inclusion into it see in Rwanda are they all they really know about and all of their care about and on that distinction they're really prepared to kill I lived in Northern Ireland for a while after a bit I thought I could tell a Protestant from a Catholic by looking they know immediately it's all that matters to them and they're willing to kill for it for the love of God in all cases by the way you could murder all murder not just this kind of inter-communal murder murder is an intimate crime that relatively few murders are of the kind of shooting spree you know mass murder kind most in most murders the victim and the murderer know each other very well yes I share love yeah they might they might live together they might be siblings or might be family members they might be close friends almost I mean like 99% of murder is an intimate crime it's a crime between people who know each other very very well and and who might in fact be said to have the kind of relationship with a family relationship of marriage whatever to go from that to for instance you know in Old Delhi in India most of the time Hindu and Muslim communities live not just side-by-side but completely interpenetrated and yet when this kind of communal violence breaks up those other people who begin to kill each other you're the people who kill your children are the people whose children were playing with your children yesterday and and it's that that's one of the most mysterious things about this the flip into hatred you know is it it it's it's you don't hate people who are strangers to you because that creates a kind of indifference you create the people who you hate the people who live next door and when that hate bursts out of you that's you reach for the government to kill it's a it's a curious thing that love and hate are this they're so closely tied together that just the flip of the coin can flip one into the other and that's it seems to me that's very interesting as a writer to examine is it it's amazing too because we are the only species it's the reason we're where we are success to extent we are that doesn't have any real genetic variation and all other species have very marked fluctuations in size and in shape and into all kinds of the human beings are if we were dogs we'd all be the same breed it's true and that's what makes us efficient and yet with the help of things like religion and race theory so it's possible to make the absolute maximum of the absolute minimum and to make it lethal and of course that would hold for formally married couples or whatever if my neighbors whatever it might be I prefer to have I mean hate hate relations with some people just keep it on even keel I'd really don't like this and I have it clarified in the beginning but when love goes bad nothing goes worse than that and that's a subject of Deepa Mehta's film earth as well what you were talking about earlier the friendships that break down the love that goes wrong absolutely hate the people you know that's when the disaster happens and sometimes you can't distinguish between that that's what's scary in earth for example ice candy man loves us so much and the first person he hurts is her and sidwa talks about the pitiless face of love and Oscar Wilde says each man kills the thing he loves and philip larkin the were the least sentimental of all poets and with the least sense of the likelihood of the survival of this what will remain of us is not that the test you'll have to pass if you ever want to think of yourself not transcend what did you do for love as quite an exacting test worth setting for yourself probably well Woody Allen talks about that you know you you were talking before about love and death and of course one of the great examinations of love and death is Woody Allen's I always recall the great scene where Woody Allen played these young russian soldiers some signs onto a rung with a Russian princess and the camera pans up to a clock showing one minute to 12 that dissolves to the same clock showing one minute past 12 hands back down to see the absolutely essential mayhem the Russian princess Lions of sated abadan sense to him darling you were wonderful how do you come to be so good at love and he says well I practice a lot of my own woody woody allen's good on love bye I think I fell in love with him reading his published fictional journal in which he has a line should I propose to MJ or it might have been jammed should I propose to GM not until I find out what the initials in her names bertie wooster says the same if the Gwendolyn spells her name with a wife forget it well I think wasn't it I think I'm right in saying that it was all grantees with the W word was it was it not you mr. Hitchens who criticized our previous president mr. Clinton for his relationship with Jennifer Fleur yes never never trust a woman who cards really required an unrequited love you talked about that a little bit before I want you someone in particular to talk about fear though you talk about that a great do you actually be a beautiful lines-- but defeated love being greater than the thing which defeats it and I was wondering if I could ask you about specifically about the relationship between your writing and readers shared and the failures that have taken place there which might be a sort of unrequited love so say for instance and some early writing and new experiences there and how your work was received well I mean I think with one exception I've been quite lucky really but it was a hell of an exception be the bad review yes I hated it I couldn't pick it up okay who did Dorothy Parker who said this is not a book that should be put down it should be held across the room in great force I had I had one or two of those no look it's it's you want people to like what you do you know it's obviously you write a book you don't want people to not like it but I think one of the things leaving a side of it not your point no no I don't care whether they like it or not I want to love it but otherwise he's a nonfiction it's always difficult when people don't like wit me right because there's a bit of you that makes the things well you obviously haven't read it properly you misunderstood it or how can you be so dumb but a thing that happens as you continue to publish books is one of the things you notice is that not everybody is going to like what you do but there are going to be people who you know because of their personal failings a malicious inclination but and bad taste a bad taste I prefer other reroll limitations yes like they're going to prefer other writers to yours and there's a point of which you decide that that's okay and that is the moment of freedom you know the moment at which you stop trying to be a crowd-pleaser you just stop you think I'm just I'm doing this you know and actually in my case the moment which really helped was when I published my novel fury which was actually had the misfortune to be published on September the 11th 2001 not a very good day to publish a book not many people having literary thoughts that day you know anyway the point about that book is it it got probably the bumpiest critical reception that I've had for whatever really and oddly that was the thing the point at which I thought you know I'm sorry you don't like it but I'm going this way you know you decide at certain points as an artist that you know where you're going you know that you that there is a certain road that you think is the interesting road to beyond and you're going in that direction you know and if people could come along with you that's excellent you know you would rather that they did and you would rather they understood why you were going that way and that they liked the journey that you were taking you prefer that but if they don't then you think well you know I'm still going this way and that's the way it's just it's a point of freedom at that point you you it's not that you don't care about the way in which people read you you do care about it but that you can't actually change the way you're writing as a result you are who you are they're immortal words of Popeye the sailorman I am what I am that's what I yes exactly it's blasphemous Association of Popeye the sailorman but Yahweh which which also means I am I always said I have to tell you after the fact why God said my favorite t-shirt which sadly is lost Iowa which was written the phrase blasphemy is a victimless crime but yeah I mean I think the thing that happened with the Satanic Verses was obviously particularly in many ways going because you know a lot of that to put it simply to have the people from the community in which you'd set your novel marching down the streets of the city in which you'd set it asking for it to be banned is you know it's a very distressing thing to see and that's one of the things that happened I mean much of the novel is in fact quite I think to my mind kind of sympathetic portrait of the condition of bustling communities living as immigrants in East London and yet those were the people marching saying that it was in some way reprehensible and of course that's a failure of connection between between book and reader that was very painful I mean more so in some way then the Ayatollah Khomeini because frankly his abilities as a literary critic were not ones that I revered also you know if if great if crazy will lives behave like crazy bullnose it's not a surprise you know but if if sort of ISM were ordinary people begin to behave in a way that's that seems echo the behavior of the crazy one nod then you begin to worry and it was upsetting it was very upset would you mind if I use up to your position just for a second to ask him a question as the non so continental almost platform and I wanted to ask you what love of country mmm especially taking off perhaps a little about what you said about the dangers of identifying this member of a race or an ethnicity the false distinction but there are people who would unembarrassed lycée would never think of themselves as ethnically or racially based but would say that they loved their country and you've written about the suffering of your country and the mutilation of it and but you've also been citizen of a resident of other companies to what role do you think does love play in this it certainly played a huge role in literature the idea of well a lot the love of poetry couldn't written Midnight's Children without without feeling lot of the place that was being written about you know a lot she was very very near the end of the novel and actually if I'm right at the end of the screenplay is is is lying where Salim talking about what he's done describes it as an act of love his whole writing project and I certainly felt that even when that book was talking about very harsh public material it was written from a point of view of love no and and I I don't think for me anyway hatred is not so powerful of motivation as a viewer to write something I mean the novel that followed Midnight's Children shame is that's how should I put it more critical of Pakistan than Midnight's arenas of India but it was proper to be so because Pakistan was a mess and and oddly with that book it seems to be more topical yes today that it was when I wrote it and it was published in 1983 you know and it seems to be more topical now than it was bad but I think that's because everything else changed no or as in the wonderful locution of News New York Times journalist she said the news agenda has come round to you description of Pakistan as a house with an E string and a West Wing and yet somehow wanted tasks I mean you you were much more press it strange didn't my children somewhere I think it said somebody says that Pakistan is a strange bird to wings without a body and then one of the wings fell off so it's a mutations on that yeah well insufficiently imagined is the thing that you're insane is described as insufficiently imagined a failure of the Dreaming mind when this idea that you could construct the country unites a unite different parts of a landmass purely on the basis of religious affinity was something which was well which the Secession of Bangladesh for example showed was not sufficient enough that if you take on the one hand East Bengal and then send in the Punjab in the northwest frontier is very historically different parts of the world with very different traditions and try just tell them they're a country because they share one thing and the name is an acronym and the name is an acronym yes punjab afghanistan kashmir in this in this in Sindh and then Balochistan overlooking but when you in the audio which is one of your languages I think it can come out as many land of the pure that's what it means which is already a warning right there yes that no good can come of no not the dry cleaned countries it's not surprising that tradition Oh in Pakistan yeah obviously because it was great because it was criticizing a military dictator who was still in power no always a risky move and and and so it would the funny thing that happened with Shane when he came out first was that he got smuggled into Pakistan in very very large numbers and and one of the major means of smuggling item was the diplomatic pouch let's say all these embassies decided that it was required reading for their staffs and so they started 70 red bucket loads of shame in through the diplomatic pouch and when and when that's embassy staff said read it they sort of disseminated it and so it was I mean it's a very interesting demonstration of how you can't ban a book I mean you can you can try it about a book you could declare a book to be banned but you can't actually ban it I had a wonderful conversation with an Egyptian maitre d at a restaurant near when I went to lunch there and he was very very excited I was there he came up to me and he said rusty rusty I said yeah and he said he said your book that book I read that book whenever anybody says that book there's only one book that they need so so I said oh okay good he said your book that book I like that book your book he said I'm Egyptian you know I am from Egypt I said good that's good and he said you know in Egypt said your book is totally bad it's totally bad he said but everybody has read it so I mean I think of course now with the internet and all that it's actually impossible to buy the text no I hadn't had a cop take it off me in Pakistan did you and you didn't throw it away toasted or stuffed him in his pond wanted to read it no no exactly well there's an interesting story from the early moments of the demonstrations against the Satanic Verses in London there was a very big demonstration that went along Kensington High Street towards the offices of Viking penguin which was just off Kensington High Street and to demonstrate against the publication of the book and an on the high street there's a very big bookstore Waterstones bookstore what stones is like British bands and Noble I guess and and they had a huge window display of the book and somebody I know his journalist happened to be in the bookstore when the police came in to talk to the bookstore owner to suggest to him the just you know for the sake of his window it might be a good idea to take the books out of the window while the March went past right afterwards fine but just just you know we don't really broken glass just just take about during the March so he did and the journalist decided that he would go back once the demonstration had dispersed to see if the bookstore had put the books back in the window and there were no books in the window so rather irritated he went to find the book store manager and said look you know you were told to take them out of the witness told to take by the window for an hour why wouldn't you put them back in and he said well we sold them all and of course the only people going past the bookstore the preceding two hours were the demonstrators so they became my readers critical readers you know we have people read the book I mean I've always there was this gentleman too many people who insisted on not reading the book in order to objector it and that was a very widespread problem and it used to upset me you know that people were condemning this book unread and and then I thought if you look at the history of attacks on on novels it's almost always the case that those attacking the book do not read it you know the people who called Lolita obscene and its author a pedophile had clearly never cracked open that book and those people who believed astonishingly that James Joyce's Ulysses was pornographic and obviously not tried it I mean Joyce Joyce's work has many many qualities but arousing sexual lust is probably not I of that necessarily so so it seems to me that maybe it's that it's kind of normal in fact when people seek to prescribe a book or to attack an author that they that they do not familiarize themselves with the thing being attacked but there's only one exceptions not that I know of which was the Archbishop of Dublin attacking Jonathan Swift for the last news of guerillas travels he said to his congregation he'd read every book of cholesterols of his part didn't believe a word of it very trenchant critique is knowing there's this great fear of stories isn't there should be not the love of stories great fear of stories because something's happening in literature you said the news agenda had come around to you there's a lot of interest in shame now there's a lot of interest in Pakistan sort of reminds me of something Ezra Pound says which is literature's news that stays news well it's you know that whole relationship I think it's it's a very complicated thing and the relationship which what you were saying about how do you bring these big public themes you know into books I think there's it is very difficult I think to make that decision to incorporate great public matters you know into into fiction because well first of all if you write the kind of book that you want to adore you know as that does wrap around mind suggests the problem we're talking about you know political events historical events is that in the end the subject always changes though and these days we live in a very accelerated time in which the subject change is very fast and so the great risk of talking about something topical in your book is that when it ceases to be topical it's good in some way damage what you're writing it was damaged people's reading of the text it ceases to be so interesting and I thought you know when I read Midnight's Children I thought that I know that the climax of the book there's this thing which was at the time very a matter of great moment which was in there are Gandhi's so-called emergency the period in the mid 70s when she suspended democracy the only time in the history of independent India that democracy was suspended so a period of semi dictatorship I don't know why I'm saying semi really it's very dictatorship and I remember thinking that one of these days somewhere down the road you know this will be Oh this'll be ancient history you know that this won't be something that everybody's so hot under the collar about as many of us were at the time nobody worry remember or care about the emergency and nobody will even really care about Indra Gandhi that much anymore and and I remember thinking what's gonna happen to this book at that time is it will either get worse or better and it'll either get worse because losing that the force of the topicality you know will will damage that last section of the book or it'll get better because it's seen to have like underlying just mobile istic architecture you know which is in a way revealed by the loss of topicality and which makes the book something that can last and I truthfully didn't know which would happen I gently as possible to be sure an atrocity no one would now read Marcel Proust for example but for his account of the Dreyfus case even though it's one of the best I mean look you probably read it not knowing what that subplot is all about whereas a but it's an eternal world no question well as George Orwell wrote 1984 in what he thought it was a very short-term battle against communist fellow travelers among the intellectuals and it'll never die if only because I think the most terrifying Ministry of State in the Big Brother to cherish it was the Ministry of love yeah I might add well it's amazing to think that 1984 is a quarter of a century ago yes and one of the things that didn't happen was the arrival of Big Brother quite as prophesied you know England may be many things but it's I suppose it almost is airstrip one but in 1984 United Kingdom is known as airstrip one because that's the only function it now serves a landing place further for the Empire for the Empire of Big Brother whereas dial press wrote a well when he sent them the menu the Granville farm and returned it to him with a note I've got a copy of it someone says that unfortunately it's impossible to sell animal stories in the United States well just in order to find this from the country the culture of Disney in order to find something that Christopher and I might not agree about the end of 1984 the last sentence of 1984 by the way since we asked for the first one yes anyone know the last census tidy favor did those who do not those who do not know the last census anyway it's he loved Big Brother that Winston Smith having gone through all his travails and be put through the horror of room 101 to face the worst thing of the world and the worst thing in the world for Winston Smith is remember his rat's butt but that's not necessarily what you find in room 101 you just find whatever for you is the worst thing in the world he is in fact broken you could say into a condition of love love for the dictation and I think clearly the book is a book and it's works at a kind of you know non literal level but the idea that the victory of totalitarianism is total that that that human beings cease to resist totally you know that even the last bastion of resistance is broken and you know there is an absolute triumph of the dark seems to me not to be true about human life it seems to be not to be true but about human history or human nature and it's the one bit of that book that I think it's too easy it's too easy because real life is what even you know at the worst moment of the Soviet Union there was never a total defeat of the dissident spirit you know we disagreed about your proof outside the whale some years ago in my opinion oil rights or rather produces a picture of complete abject despair at the end of 1984 because he hoped that if it could be imagined it could be resisted with many people interpreted this as just it is self a concession to spare which would have destroyed the point of since writing the book I think I'm right that he was but I think I'm also writing saying that if you wanted to imagine the human personality completely emptied out broken denatured and humiliated the best way to do it was to say that they loved it they loved the way they lived and I've been to North Korea where love is compulsory and where the Dear Leader and the beloved leader and the great leader and so not the objetive not more than not just veneration adoration compulsory love believe me you can't think about that you can't think about love the same way it should have seen it in in action like that Mao had a go at that too yes but it's interesting to me you're talking about how books transcend their immediate context and that's the point I'm going back to Midnight's Children not only won the Booker it won the Booker of Booker's and then it won the best of the Booker forty years later so clearly there was something that just kept ticking one day were surprised in Iran no no shame shame best novel published in your own but they pirated it to begin with it was published by the state publishing corporation illegally I never saw been then they then they gave it this prize I never got a prize so it's it's all you know but this is actually men love curdled there but you know the Iranian hostage the arc Runyon ability to offer brickbats and bouquets without they're actually being either extend is in fact the why itself virtual because because the a fatwa in Shia law is a legal document that's to say it has to be there's to be a piece of paper on which it is written out which has to be signed by the judge concerned and witnessed and given under seal it's a it's a it's a you know it's it's not a scrap of paper it's it's an entity it's a legal entity nobody has ever produced the funbox Khomeini was very close to death at the time he lying on his deathbed he was living in very sequestered circumstances very very few people had access to him only two or three members of his own inner circle amongst who improvident amongst whom was his son ahmud coming now mercifully deceased like his father do not mess with novice like general zia the pen is mightier so anyway what have all that happened was that a mature man he went to the Iranian television station and from a scrap of paper read out a statement saying that the Imam had issued the following football nobody's ever nobody's ever produced it it seems quite possible that the lies a fiction in exactly the same way as the prize given to shame was a fiction first they gave me a reward which I didn't get and then they gave me an attack which didn't happen it's completely I might add that I might add that I become a slight friend of communities son oh yes but we saved he's fairly Julia but interesting cleric in cool who completely reviewed yet his grandfather's theory of power absolutely rejects the doctrine of the VA actually the idea that the Iranian people belong to the clergy when you came to my house in Washington I made him sit in the chair where Salman had sat and I photographed him and not at the same time but it would have been nice if you'd been together and he wrote and he wrote he could have had a company wrote in the in the Flyleaf of my Quran the reasons why and the verses I should look up to show that his grandfather had no right in Islamic law to issue just a sentence against a writer if you live long enough and if you don't fall in love too easily if you keep your hatred pure wonderful things can happen as they say if you have this if you sit by the river for long enough the body of your enemy would have tried to bring this full circle to the second part of our symposium which was imagining better worlds did you folks happen to catch the opening episode of lost the people watched last year and on this episode Desmond and the plane was shown holding a copy of her own in the sea of stories and there's a block people people who follow these shows are very religious about them and the blogger posted a line to try to explain what was going on with that reference and explained that the point of big question in her own and the sea of stories was what's the point of stories that aren't even true the blogger went on to answer lost answers that they allow us to imagine better words so let me ask you somebody who teaches post-colonial literature which can be a very politicized kind of feel right because it's set in a political context and in my field the love of literature and the love of the aesthetic is the love that dare not speak its name and I want to ask you if you have actually written a book about this called native intelligence and I'm going to ask you this question post factor which means I'll probably have to rewrite the book once I hear you talk about it what's the relationship between aesthetics and politics how do you write from a place of love you're talking about these big themes and what is the point of stories that aren't even true well just those were just to correct you very slightly what's the use of stories that would seem true it's about utilitarianism this question often asked about literature is what for you know and and I wanted to at least suggest the idea that the point about literature is that it's useless that it doesn't it shouldn't be seen functionally you know what's the use of Alice in Wonderland you know it doesn't help you fix the fridge it doesn't solve the problems of your life that the only use it has as far as I know is pleasure so first of all the point is that use is the wrong thing to be talking about when you're talking about stories in the book it's of course it's a question asked by a child angrily of his storyteller father after his mother walks out claiming that the father has his head in the clouds does not have his feet on the ground and the book becomes an examination of that relationship between the world of the imagination and the ordinary everyday and I I don't know I have to say I know nothing about lost what number the flight is you know such I know all these things are very important if all the characters have numbers I believe etcetera I really forget about but I'm happy that they were reading my book and I hope the Amazon number shoots up that's the number I'm interested seems to me that the relationship between imagination and actuality is much much closer than we think put it like this we all know that things are imagined before they come into being you know there is no motorcar until um somebody imagines a motorcar first you have to you have to imagine a refrigerator before you can make a register so just forget literature just terms of making new things they have to be dreamed before they're married no and so the imagination is actually the place where we bring the world in to be and always has been and always will be so the imaginative world the imagined world inside our head is that place where we make the world outside our head and so it's not some kind of frivolous sparetime activity no it's it's not just a pastime or means of relaxation it's actually whether we're writers or not you know it's it's the thing that we all use to make our lives before you get married you have to imagine that you might be married and you have to also think whether that particular person over there would be the person and what she would say if you asked her and so on you know it happens inside you before it happens outside you had to imagine that a few times so anyway so that's I mean I think that's that's what I think is that we are creatures defined by our imaginative capacity and that capacity has allowed us to be the species that we are we wouldn't give annual Nobel prizes for new discoveries if we were not constantly in the business of making new discoveries but I was just waiting for that's it I think perfectly because if keeping it also within the context of our wider discussion if anyone here was asked by the friend or partner do you love me or say you love me who isn't going to feel it's like clutch of that okay just as if you if someone says well what's the use of Shakespeare do you think now it's kind of the same both cases this if you have to ask you are either not getting the point or something's gone or I some things have to be so to speak intuitive and now the Nobel Prize for Literature is to be awarded specifically to a work of fiction actually doesn't have your fiction he was Winston Churchill got it of his history for example but it's Jennifer that has elevated the public discourse contributed to peace and harmony in the world all the kind of things literature cannot really not be expected to do it has to be worthy it's defined out of existence it's been given to a lot of boring and unworthy people and if I may say so hasn't been given to one or two extremely worthy and deserving authors but just only instance it because it fits with what I was going to say about love and Shakespeare don't try do not try and define these things you'll kill it you will kill it like concrete poetry you could Emily Dickinson says that love is all there is and that is all we know if love inefficiently translated I think about the people's is all you need is love yes require well I have a feeling they could go on with this poetry recitation I was going to I could recite the Wars of the competence is too short it easy okay The Walrus is enough there's more narrative you want to finish on a nonsense point please I think that's a nonsense base more sense so I'm assigning on the sea it's about the love of oysters anyway so it's thematically connected the Sun was shining on the sea shining with all its might it did its very best to make the billows smooth and bright so this was odd because it was the middle of the night the moon was shining sulkily because she thought the Sun had got no business to be there after the day was done it's very rude of him she said to come and spoil the fun the sea was wet as wet could be the sands were dry as dry you could not see a cloud because no clouds were in the sky no birds were flying overhead there were no birds to flies Walrus and the carpenter were walking close at hand they wept like anything to see such quantities of sand if this was only cleared away they said I wouldn't it be ground if seven maids it's seven mops swept it for half a year do you suppose the walrus said that they could get it clear I doubt it said the carpenter and shared a bitter tear the oysters come and walk with us the walrus did beseech a pleasant walk a pleasant talk along the briny beach we cannot do with more than four to give a hand to each and there's a two lines I can't remember what the eldest oyster is not impressed by this shook his head meaning to say he did not choose to leave the oyster bed for young oysters hurried up all eager for the treat their hair was brushed their faces washed their shoes were clean and neat and this was odd because you know they hadn't any feet for more oysters hurried up and yet another fall and thick and fast they came at last and more and more and more all scrambling through the frothy waves popping through property frothing waves and scrambling to the shore the walrus and the carpenter' walked on a mile or so and then they rested by a rock conveniently low and all the little oysters stood and waited in a row time has come the walrus said to speak of many things the shoes and ships and sealing wax of cabbages and kings but why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings but wait a bit the oysters cried before we have our chat for some of us are out of breath and all of us are fat no hurry said the carpenter they thanked him much for that loaf of bread the walrus said is what we chiefly need pepper and vinegar besides are very nice indeed now if you're ready oysters dear we could begin to feed not on us the oysters cried turning a little blue after such kindness that would be a dismal thing to do the night is fine the walrus said do you admire the view it was so good of you to come and you are very nice the carpenter said nothing but cut us another slice I wish you were not quite so deaf I've had to ask you twice seems a shame the walrus said to play them such a trick after we've brought them out so far and made them trot so quick the carpenter said nothing but the butter spread too thick I weep for you the walrus said I deeply sympathize with sobs and tears he sought it out those of the largest size holding his pocket-handkerchief before his streaming eyes well oysters dear the walrus said we've had a pleasant run shall we be trotting home again but answer came there none and this was scarcely odd because they tragedy comedy let me thank you all for coming to Emory you who came for love of Salman you who came to talk to us and about him and to the audience you who came to listen listening to an act of love thank you very much the preceding program is copyrighted by Emory University

Channel: Emory University

Views: 38,394

Rating: 4.7833934 out of 5

Keywords: Emory Libraries, Emory Library, emory, university, college, salman, rushdie, christopher hitchens, hitchens, deepa Mehta, mehta, deepika bahri, love, conversation, symposium, essay, writer, writing, novel, book, enchantress of florence, eros, kinds of love, types of love, archive, romantic love

Id: owerxb8rSPo

Length: 76min 41sec (4601 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 04 2010